• Bomberman Land Touch 1 & 2
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker
• Tetris DS
• X-Men
• CSI
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
• Trauma Center: Under The Knife (currently playing this)

Don’t worry, you won’t be getting long long reviews for each game, in fact, some barely even warrant one paragraph! Anyway, today’s post is about Children of Mana. The reason I chose this game was because I played a Mana game on my PS last time, I think it was called Tree of Mana, and I really enjoyed it. This one? Well, read on for my review.

Children of Mana
Genre: RPG
My rating: 4.5/10

When you start, you can choose between a few different characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I never enjoy defending or casting magic spells, so I always choose the characters with a strong attack power. Of course, as in the case with most RPGs, there’s evil around, you need to defeat it, blah blah blah..

The game consists mainly of several dungeons. In each dungeon, there are a certain number of levels that you need to complete before you face the boss of the dungeon. In order to complete a level, you need to find a gleamdrop (which functions as a key), and a gleamwell (which functions like a teleporter). There are a few ways to do so, it will be displayed on the screen. You either have to defeat a certain enemy, defeat all enemies, or it could be hidden by pots / bushes, etc. During the dungeon crawling, if you are defeating in the middle, you will be teleported back to your village, and you will have to start all over again, which can be a major pain if you’re up to Level 11 out of 19!

Really, that’s the only main thing to do in this game. You can take up sidequests like searching for an item, or clearing areas of enemies, but to do that, you will need to go through the same dungeons all over again. There is a side area, where you can collect these crystals to enhance your stats / give you special abilities. How do you get these crystals? Well, you can either buy them, or get them as rewards from your sidequests, again…dungeon crawling!

One thing I found really annoying was a part of the battle system. You have several weapons you can use, swords, bows, whips, and a hammer. I like using whips, because they can hit many enemies at one go. Anyway, when you fight, you can knock back your enemies a few steps. If they are near the wall, they will ricochet off the wall, and whack into you. If you so happen to be standing near thorns, or areas that can hurt you, well, you will end up getting hurt!

It was quite enjoyable for the first few hours, after awhile it got really monotonous. Of course, me being me, I had to finish up the game. I generally will finish a game unless it’s so bad that I really can’t stand it. I suppose you could call it perseverance!

Related posts:

1. DS Review – New Super Mario Bros
2. FFX-2 Completed!

The last few laps have been pretty boring, Nico Rosberg just had a pretty major accident, so the cars have been behind the safety car for quite awhile. I love the Monte Carlo race because it’s so different compared to any other race. It’s a street race, and the rich and famous always flock to this race. You can see people watching from the yachts and from the hotels. Wow, the race just resumed, and Raikkonen’s already banged into Sutil’s Force India car! Poor Sutil, he was in 5th place and was going to get points which was amazing for the Force India team, and his hopes have just been crushed by Raikkonen. Rainy races sure make for interesting races!

So, today, T asked me whether I was interested in going to Manila and Boracay Island. We’ve got a friend based in Manila for the next couple of months, so accommodation in Manila would be free. Added to that, there’s some sort of promotion for flights right now, so supposedly the flight to Manila would be almost free, except for the airport taxes. All in all, the budget would be something like RM1.5k to RM2k. I just don’t know…that’s a lot of money! Although it would be a good opportunity since the Manila accommodation would be free.

Boracay’s an island near the Philippines, and is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous. Here are some pictures, stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia!

One of the reasons that there is a promotion is because at that time, it’s the start of the monsoon season. T seems to think that since it’s only the start, the weather shouldn’t be to bad, but our friend is going to double check with a travel agent. So, to go, or not to go?

It seems like such a lousy time to be going on holiday, with the prices of everything going up. I had breakfast at Village Park in Uptown yesterday (the best nasi lemak around!), and the price has gone up from RM6 to RM6.50. The prices of everything is going up everywhere, and I’m sure it will only go up more, with the prices of oil in the US reaching record levels. I can’t imagine how the lower-income groups are surviving, even I’m starting to get worried about inflation, and I’m sure I’m earning more than they are. Added to that, the fact that my office is only about ten minutes away from my house, my petrol expenditure is really low. Plus, I still live with my parents, so I don’t pay rent, nor do I pay for groceries! OK, I do help out with some bills, but I’m sure that’s nowhere near what I would be paying if I lived on my own. How do people do it!

I find myself constantly thinking nowadays about ways to make more money, other than from my normal 9 – 6 job. If only it were so easy to think of money-making ideas, isn’t it? If only I were really good at some form of sports, I could be making lots of money. Of course, not badminton. :p Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Pete Sampras…think of the bucket-loads of money they’ve made during the course of their career!

I suppose that in the end, I will be making the trip if the price is right, since T really wants to go. With this trip in July, Bali in August, and hopefully Egypt in November, I’d better get my brains cracking if I want to earn some extra side money.

PS: The race just finished, it was cut short because it reached the maximum 2 hours. Hamilton won, followed by Kubica and Massa.

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1. The last race
2. Shocked, flabberghasted, astounded!
3. Little bits of information…

On Saturday, I attended my colleague’s wedding at the Mines Beach Resort. I personally love beach weddings, I’ve always pictured myself getting married on a beach, a small intimate do. As I walk down the…beach, Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban will do a live duet. :p I wish! Anyway, the Mines is not exactly my idea of a beach wedding. It’s a small man-made area, and not very beach-y. A few of us arrived quite early, and within minutes, we were melting. It’s really hot, due to the sand trapping the heat. The wedding favors that were provided turned out to be wooden folding fans which came in very useful! It was quite a sweet wedding, with the bride and groom BOTH surprising each other with songs they had prepared beforehand.

There was not much liquor, only wine for everyone, but the bride had secreted two bottles of something or other for our tables. I went home earlier, I’m so not into drinking, but I heard later that at least one of my colleagues drank and ended up puking. I really don’t understand why people drink so excessively! Is it fun? Does it make you feel grown-up? Do you like the feeling of being drunk? I don’t like the taste of alcohol, the few that I like are Kahlua and Baileys, but even so, I wouldn’t drink much.

On Sunday, I went for T’s cousin’s wedding at Zipangu in Shangri-La. I’m not a big fan of Japanese food, but I have grown to like it lately. When I heard that it was a buffet, visions of yummy Japanese food danced in my head. Zipangu’s food selection (perhaps it was different because the chefs were catering solely for the wedding?) was quite disappointing. There wasn’t much choice, eg, the sushi section only had about 3 – 4 different types of sushi! On the dessert table, there was quite a lot of choice, from cakes to fruits with chocolate sauce. However, the chocolate sauce was extremely thin, and not very nice. Altogether, pretty disappointing.

It was a non-traditional Chinese wedding, there weren’t speeches or anything! They did have the champagne toast, which was performed by the groom himself. Hmm, never known that to happen before. And he didn’t do the three traditional toasts, all he said was, “On three, One, Two, THREE!”.

At the end of the dinner, when we were saying our goodbyes, T and his cousin hugged for ages, and they both had tears in their eyes at the end! They’re really close, his cousin stayed with T’s family for about four years. It was so sweet to see two men expressing their emotions (does that sound gay? ). The cousin ended by saying that T’s like a brother to him, and that I’ve got a good man! I won’t tell you HOW many of the relatives kept asking us when our turn was, it was so annoying!

Am I that old that everyone thinks I should be getting married already? Geez! It makes me wonder, whether I’m an old woman, I’ll be asking younger people when they are gonna get married. After all, I’m already saying how time flies, which is quite an ‘old’ thing to say. Oh, and I also say stuff like, “In my day, I never got so much allowance from my parents.” I’m getting old….

Related posts:

1. Getting older day by day

One of the things I learned about cows whilst watching the show was that stuff seems to be constantly coming out of their mouth and nose. Or was it highlighted to seem that way? Anyway, apparently the cow is able to lick the stuff coming out from it’s nose! Yeuch!

What were some of the tasks that the host took on? Well, there were these huge containers in the farm containing a lot of erm…excrement or manure, would be the polite word. One of the containers sprung a leak, so Mike was given the task of cleaning the containers with a big hose. And these were really huge containers, many hundred feet high, so, not a quick job! One of the admirable things is that apparently the contents of the containers can somehow be converted to some form of energy, I think it was methane? And eventually, the farm will be running 100% on this energy. Amazing, isn’t it, what good can come out of waste!

Next, he had to clean the cows’ udder. When a cow has a hairy udder, the likelihood of the milk being contaminated by stuff on the hair is higher, so they had this pseudo-blowtorch thingy, which they use to singe the hair off! I have no idea how it doesn’t hurt the cow, but Mike tried it on his hand, so I guess it really doesn’t hurt. One of the harder tasks that he had to perform, was to try and impregnate a cow with a bull’s sperm. In order to do it, he had to stuff his gloved hand into the cow’s rectum! Now, that’s really nasty.

I’m amazed at the different types of jobs he’s tried out, they range from jobs like scraping dead animals off the highway, to sewer inspector, to avian vomitologist (I’m not exactly sure what that entails, but there’s the word vomit there!).

We sure owe a lot to the people that handle these kinds of jobs, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to handle most of them. Every job has it’s bad points, but I must say, I’ve never been sprayed by faeces before!

No related posts.

I said a few posts ago that there would be reviews of the DS games I’ve played so far. Well, the games are beginning to pile up, and if I don’t review some of them soon, I’m going to forget which ones I’ve played already!

The first one I played was New Super Mario Bros. Weird title, isn’t it? NEW Super Mario Bros. So, if they have a sequel, it would be Newer Super Mario Bros? Anyway, I wanted to test out my DS Lite on a familiar game, so that I could have some form of comparison. My brother used to play Mario Bros when I was a small kid, so I kind of knew what it was all about.

I booted up my DS Lite, and began my adventure. It looked a lot better than what I expected, keep in mind that this was the first game I ever played on a DS. The graphics were pretty cool, for some reason, I always thought that the graphics on a DS weren’t good. Of course, I was comparing it to a PSP! The sound quality was not too bad, full volume is a bit soft, but it was clear.

I think that for all people who used to like any version of Mario, they would love this game. It seems to stick quite closely to the original Mario Bros, with a few variations. It’s a standard platformer, where you need to go through the different worlds to save the Princess. As with all Mario games, you can grow to different sizes, but what’s new is the super-sized version where you can romp through the level for X seconds without getting hurt, as well as a mini-version which allows you to get to all the small areas.

There seems to be room for ’side-quests’, where you collect Star Coins. If you reach a certain number, you can access special areas. Now, I haven’t played it fully, so I don’t know whether these are side-quests, or necessary to complete the main story-line. In my opinion, it should be a sidequest, as it’s not so easy to collect all the Star Coins. Each level has three Star Coins, some are in plain view, and others aren’t so easy to find.

Well, I honestly can’t go on and on about this game, because I’ve not played it for very long! I’m more of an RPG gamer, and this game is so totally not my style. For one thing, I have a problem with timing my jumps, and in this game, you need to jump a LOT. I always seem to end up jumping over enemies, instead of on them. And instead of jumping over fireballs, I jump into them. Hehe, that’s why I’ve rated it only as a 7.5, I’ve minused a few points due to my lack of skill in this game which isn’t how it should be scored, but hey, it’s my rating, I can do what I like! :p Other sites have given it up to 9.5 out of 10! So, if you’re a Mario fan, don’t hesitate anymore, go out and get it!

Related posts:

1. DS Review – Children of Mana
2. Fun games!
3. FFX-2 Completed!

I used to have lovely straight hair when I was a kid. Then, for some reason, in Standard 5, it started going crazy and turned wavy. It’s not even the nice type of wavy, it’s more like frizzy wavy. It’s already been over a year since I last straightened my hair, so it was long overdue. I was tying up my hair most of the time because it was getting so big.

I made my appointment at Monsoon ID in 1 Utama (they’re having a 49% discount on all treatments), and was there promptly at 11am. They assigned me to a stylist called Keith, and I told him that I was bored of my hairstyle, and to change it. I don’t think that in Monsoon ID, they are very brave with their hair styles, mine basically looks almost the same, but with a side parting!

Anyway, despite looking like Cousin IT for quite awhile, it’s turned out pretty OK so far. Of course, I have yet to wash my hair. Most probably as soon as I wash it, it’ll be back to the center parting! I’ll have to re-train my hair to get used to the side parting, I don’t want to have a bald line in the center of my head. And can you imagine, even WITH the 49% discount, the bill came up to about RM400. Heheh…

Two reflections about the whole process:

• Chinese always assume that if you’re Chinese, you speak Cantonese.
• Hair salons must be one of the most unfriendly businesses to the environment. My hair was rinsed at least 4 times and new towels were used each time.

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1. Chinese New Year
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